Physical pain and the goal of aversively stimulated aggression.

Several studies have indicated that anger arousal elicits instigation to inflict injury, but there is good evidence to date that noninsulting aversive events also create a desire to hurt someone. The verbal hostility or physical aggression displayed in previous investigations of the effects of such aversive stimuli might be expressions of an instigation to hit, but not necessarily to hurt, the available target. Two experiments were designed to demonstrate that painful environmental conditions evoke aggressive inclinations directed toward doing harm even when the available target is not responsible for the suffering. In both studies university women kept one hand in a tank of water that was either painfully cold or much warmer while they delivered rewards and punishments to another woman supposedly in the course of supervising her work. Half of the subjects in each condition were informed that their punishments might hurt their partner, whereas the others were told that these punishments probably would be helpful. In the first experiment the two variables interacted to affect the subjects' behavior only during the first work period. Experiment 2 yielded interaction in both periods for the reward measure. In general, the women exposed to the warmer water tended to deliver the greatest number of rewards when they had been told punishment would hurt, whereas those in the cold-water condition were least rewarding if they had been informed punishment would injure their partner. Citing evidence that a lower number of rewards was somewhat punitive, we conclude that the aversive stimulation had evoked an instigation to do harm, and that the information about the possibility of hurting the partner served as a goal cue facilitating the overt expression of the instigation. Factor analyses of the subjects' feelings in the second study suggested that the women's feelings were organized differently the first and second times they had their hand in the water.